


falling like a feather, soft and light

by ephemera (incognitajones)



Series: Asterisms [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 08:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10510413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/ephemera
Summary: In which Jyn is convinced that she's hallucinating due to hypothermia. How else could she be safe and warm in Cassian's arms?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt on the R1 kinkmeme.](http://rogueonekink.dreamwidth.org/1084.html?thread=615228#cmt615228)
> 
> In the Tolkien fandom, there was a tradition of giving stories to others on your birthday (because that's what hobbits do), so here is my hobbit-style birthday present to all of you. I've had so much fun in the Star Wars and Rogue One fandoms this year, and I hope that I've passed on a little bit of joy to others as well.

When Jyn wakes up, she knows she’s dead. 

As hard as she tries, she can’t remember anything after crouching against the rising wind, making a last desperate attempt to comm Echo Base or anyone else who might still be out on patrol. In reality, her frozen body must be buried under a low mound of snow somewhere on the high plateau of Hoth. Maybe it’ll be found after the storm blows over, maybe (more than likely) not. 

But she’s always heard that hypothermia is a gentle death, and that must be true because it’s given her the gift of hallucinatory peace and warmth, the company of a friend instead of dying alone. Even in darkness, she knows Cassian is the one lying beside her from the pattern of his breathing, the scratch of his beard against her forehead, the faint scorched scent of blaster oil that always seems to permeate his parka.

Jyn is sorry she screwed up, but at least she didn’t take anyone else with her this time, and she’s resting in Cassian’s arms; almost exactly the same way she thought she’d die on Scarif. It’s enough, more than enough. It’s a good way to die.

 

The next time Jyn wakes, what convinces her she’s alive is the growling of her pinched stomach. Hunger doesn’t seem like the kind of sensation that would be included in the afterlife.

She’s also chilly, Cassian’s imaginary presence having vanished. But as she stirs, thin survival blankets crinkle around and underneath her. She opens her eyes to a sourceless, cold blue twilight: Hoth’s sun filtered through stormclouds and the roof of a Rebel-issue emergency shelter. Someone must have found her after all.

Static buzzes, jolting her into full alertness and making her aware that her whole body is one aching bruise. She lifts her head, looking around for the noise. 

Cassian is crouching by her feet at the sealed door of the tent, clicking the button on his comm repeatedly with no response but more static. He swears at the unresponsive comm and shakes it in frustration. A splinter of raw happiness pierces Jyn’s chest; she can’t keep her mouth from curling into a stupid grin at the sight of imperturbable Captain Andor exasperated by uncooperative technology.

“Can’t reach the base?” Her voice rasps painfully in her throat, sounding like she’s swallowed gravel.

He turns to look at her and his face softens, a half-hidden smile smoothing away the near-permanent crease between his brows. “No. The storm’s still blocking sub-space transmissions.”

She sits up in her nest of blankets, which sets off a chain of racking coughs. “How—how did—” She can’t go on for coughing. Cassian’s hand appears in front of her, holding out his canteen. She snatches it and drinks greedily. The flat, metallic water is so cold it makes her teeth ache, and tastes like heaven.

“If you mean how did I find you, I picked up your last transmission just before the storm hit.” This close, Cassian looks drawn and tired, his beard harsh against his windburned skin. His hair is a tousled mess from the balaclava now bunched down around his neck. 

Jyn’s stomach growls again and Cassian hands her a ration bar. She tears the wrapper open with her teeth and bites off a huge chunk, washing it down with more ice-cold water. “How long are we stuck here?” she asks through a gluey mouthful of protein paste.

He shrugs. “A few more hours? As soon as the storm blows over, I can set up the emergency beacon. Then it’s just a matter of how long it takes the base to pick up our signal.”

Jyn takes another swig from the canteen and shivers as the cold water runs down her throat. She’s still wearing all of her gear except her boots and snow pants, and their combined body heat has made the temperature inside the small tent bearable, but it’s not exactly balmy.

“You were hypothermic when I found you—you need to stay warm. Get back under the blanket.” 

She bristles at his attempt to order her around. He needs the warmth just as much as she does. Besides, it’s not like there’s enough room in this shelter for one of them to stay outside the covers. She lifts a corner of the rustling blanket and flaps it at him. “Only if you do too.”

Cassian makes an annoyed noise, but he crawls over and awkwardly wrestles into position under the thin blanket. Jyn tries to leave a reasonable amount of space between them while staying as far away from the cold tent wall as possible—which isn’t very far, considering the shelter is smaller than a double bed.

“You’re still too cold. Come here,” he grumbles, and tugs her closer until her face is pressed into his chest. Jyn ignores the way her heart kicks against her ribs as he unzips his parka and wraps her up in both his jacket and his arms, enveloping her in the warmth of his body. The dim halflight and the unending whisper of wind-driven snow over the tent create a strange pocket of peace, as though the world consists of nothing but the two of them in this tiny refuge. She sighs, her eyes drifting shut, her sore muscles melting against him instinctively. Cassian’s breath stirs her hair.

“What happened?” His voice is soft, but so close she feels it reverberate in her own chest.

“Just bad luck.” Jyn opens her eyes, then hastily shuts them again. It’s easier to talk when she can’t see the stubble blurring the edges of Cassian’s beard, the chapped skin at the corner of his lips, or the way his lashes cast his eyes in shadow.

“My tauntaun stumbled into a crevasse.” She remembers how the snow disappeared beneath her mount’s feet, the panic as he struggled for balance at the slippery brink… She swallows hard and goes on. “I had to jump free or I’d have gone down with him. And then I was on foot, with no survival gear because it was all in the saddlebags. At least the comm was clipped to my parka.”

Cassian’s arms tighten around her and she feels him draw in a deep breath. To distract them both from picturing her icy death, she asks, “Where’s yours?”

“I let him go.” Cassian shrugs, the solid plane of his chest moving under her cheek. “He’d have frozen solid if I tried to tether him, and it’s not like he could carry us both anyway. Maybe he’ll find his way back to the base on his own.”

Jyn snorts skeptically. As far as she can tell, the tauntauns’ defining characteristic is a lack of intelligence. “Everything after that is a bit fuzzy,” she admits, licking her dry lips. “I kept trying to comm the base, but the storm was already coming in. I didn’t think anyone had heard me. I don’t remember you finding me.”

“I was the last one out on patrol. I was headed in when I caught your transmission.” Cassian says nothing else for a moment. His next words are so quiet that the susurrus of the wind almost covers them. “If I hadn’t heard it… you’d have vanished. Just—gone.” 

Jyn opens her eyes. Cassian is watching her, his eyes dark and vulnerable. The longing in them hurts in her own chest, making her breath short. The last time she saw him broken so wide open was in an elevator flickering with darkness, a minute away from what both of them thought would be the end of their lives. 

Maybe it’s the eerily similar atmosphere of the storm that’s bringing him so close to saying things they’ve left unspoken since that elevator by more-or-less mutual agreement. He’s too cautious, she too scarred, for anything to happen between them impulsively. They’re both held back by the knowledge that in the midst of war, wanting anything more than a brief moment of physical release is foolish. And yet, she doesn’t try to stop him from speaking. She holds her breath, and waits. 

“Jyn,” he whispers, and the way he says her name sets her heart trip-hammering. “I thought we’d die together. And that would have been… I could have been satisfied with that. But if you just disappeared, and I had no idea what happened… I—I don’t know what I’d do.”

Jyn punches him in the chest as hard as she can from this distance. “You karking asshole!” she spits. 

Cassian gapes at her, and she draws her elbow back farther to make the second blow harder and more satisfying. “What do you think happens each time you go off on one of your top secret missions?” The third time she strikes at him, he finally seizes her fist, capturing it inside his hand and holding it still. “I get to wonder how long it will take me to find out that you’re dead! Maybe, if I’m _lucky_ , Draven or Mothma would think to mention it eventually, or Bodhi would hear something from another pilot…”

Her lungs are working like a bellows and she has to stop shouting for a moment so she can catch her breath. It’s not because her eyes are stinging; Jyn Erso does not cry. “So no, you don’t get to tell me about being scared I was dead, unless you finally have the guts to do something about it.”

Shit. Her mouth snaps shut, but it’s too late: she can’t recall the words. Cassian’s gaze shutters and turns blank and Jyn knows that she’s ruined everything. She’s pushed too hard, said too much, and now he’ll retreat behind his iron armour of duty again.

Then he lifts his hand and gently touches a fingertip to the corner of her eye, brushing away the unacknowledged moisture. “I’ve never been a brave man, Jyn.” His voice is hoarse. “But you—you make me want to be.”

He leans in and kisses her, soft and so achingly sweet that her heart twists in her chest until she’s breathless.

This is not what Jyn expected; she’d thought that if she and Cassian ever came together it would be a sudden, fierce collision. Instead they’re tentative, careful, as though what’s between them is an unstable explosive element. 

She turns her head and presses her lips just at the edge of his beard, tasting him for the first time. That one brief kiss makes her light-headed with daring. So she does it again, moving slowly down the column of his throat. His skin is a little salty with sweat, warm and slightly rough with stubble under her lips. Her hand curls around the nape of his neck, her fingers spreading through the soft hair there and pressing his head down to hers.

Jyn has never much cared for kissing for its own sake; as far as she’s concerned, it’s just a brief prelude to the main event. If not for Hoth’s freezing temperature, she’d have Cassian naked beneath her by now. But forced to go slowly, she finds satisfaction in learning the shape of his lips moving under hers, the way he tastes, what makes him groan into her mouth. And he seems more than content to kiss her and kiss her, over her eyelids, her cheekbones, other places that Jyn’s never thought of as sensitive before, until just his breath on her jaw makes her whole body smolder.

Time crawls to a near standstill and Jyn imprints every millisecond on her brain to remember when she needs to: the long line of contact where their bodies meet and move flush against each other; Cassian’s mouth soft and searching, learning Jyn just as she is him. She feels like a star, golden and burning and glowing from within, and she wants to give him back every atom of the pleasure he’s giving her. She drinks in every catch in his breath, every noise he makes. Her world narrows to the goal of making Cassian moan like that again.

She presses Cassian back down onto the blanket, her thigh between his legs, and nuzzles down the hinge of his jaw. His balaclava gets in the way and she tugs it aside impatiently. He slides his hands along her ribs under her parka, his fingers burning even through layers of clothing. He pushes her hips down, rolling them against his body, and they both gasp for breath.

Cassian hasn’t touched her bare skin yet and Jyn is already panting, the ache between her legs thickening in time with the beat of her heart: more, more, more. She presses harder against his thigh at the same moment he pushes back, and can’t swallow the whimper that escapes from the back of her throat. 

The discarded comm squawks with feedback and crackles into garbled words. “—break, Captain Andor, Sergeant Erso, do you read? This is Echo Base, over.” 

Cassian pulls his mouth away from Jyn and swears explosively in a language she doesn’t know. He sits up and fumbles behind him for the comm as she rolls to the side. The sudden loss of his warmth and the cold air leaking into her disarranged clothes makes her shiver. 

“Copy Echo Base. This is Captain Andor, do you read?” Cassian’s voice is crisp, calm. He doesn’t sound as though his face is flushed, his lips swollen from kisses and his hair a tousled wreck from her hands. 

“Base Dispatch here, Andor, it’s good to hear your voice. Sergeant Erso didn’t report to base last night either, do you know her last location? Over.”

“Affirmative, I picked up her distress call and located her. We’re set up in an emergency shelter about ten klicks northeast of base.”

“That’s a relief. Storm’s blown out, we’ll fire up a snowspeeder to fetch you both.” Jyn throws her arm over her mouth and bites her sleeve to muffle her frustrated scream. She could cheerfully murder Dispatch and their kriffing poor sense of timing. Why couldn’t the storm have lasted just a little longer?

Cassian clears his throat. “Copy that. ETA?”

“About thirty minutes. Sit tight until then. Echo Base out.”

Cassian drops the comm to the blanket and shoves his hand through his hair. He looks down at her though his dark lashes, almost shy. 

Jyn rises to her knees and tugs his balaclava off over his head. If all she has is half an hour, she wants to make the most of it. 

Cassian cups her face in his hand, tracing her jaw with his thumb. “You can’t take off any more clothes,” he warns, trying to sound stern, but his mouth folds into a helpless smile.

“Not until I get you someplace warmer,” Jyn agrees. “But in the meantime...” She draws back and looks at him speculatively. “I think I’m going to make a mark, right here.” She presses a fingertip to the place on his neck, just under the hinge of his jaw, where she’s been tempted to kiss him since roughly eight minutes after they met. 

Cassian shudders and bites his lip, half-closing his eyes. 

Jyn’s delighted to discover that just telling him what she wants to do—how she’s going to touch him, taste him, mark him with her teeth—is enough to make him incoherent. She spends the rest of their thirty minutes outlining all of her plans for him in detail. It almost (almost) makes up for the fact that she has to wait so long to do it.

**Author's Note:**

> I live in a climate where each winter, people die from being caught out in blizzards. So if there’s a little too much realism in this hypothermia fic, that’s why.
> 
> Also, pop quiz! If your car breaks down or gets stuck in the snow, what do you do?  
> Answer: **STAY WITH YOUR VEHICLE**. It’s easier for searchers to find you, and even in an unheated shelter (i.e. a car), you can survive very cold temperatures. If you decide to leave... your odds are not good. /PSA
> 
> Edited to add: I started off writing this story in Cassian's POV, but cut that part in the end. [The deleted scene](https://incognitajones.tumblr.com/post/159088754768/falling-like-a-feather-soft-and-light-in-which) is posted on my tumblr for anyone interested.


End file.
